← Principles
watching

“Show the prompt change beside the result change.”

A score with no link to the edit that caused it cannot be acted on. The person sees the two prompt versions and the two sets of answers on one screen, and a regression points at a line. Dashboards that report quality on their own leave the person to guess which change did it.

The Context Matrix

Where this principle has been tested. Untested cells are honest gaps, not passing grades — seen evidence for one? Tell us.

ChatIDECLICanvas / DocAmbient / Background
Coding
Knowledge Work ◐
Consumer
Enterprise Ops
Creative

● supports · ◐ boundary · ✕ violates · blank untested

Linked Patterns

Comparison View

Boundary Conditions

  • knowledge-work × canvas-doc × supervised

    The Console shows versions side by side but names no baseline; the person ranks by reading.

Evidence

supports

Braintrust aligns rows to a named baseline and shows the delta per row.

knowledge-work × canvas-doc × supervised · Braintrust: pick a baseline and each row shows its score change in red or green

supports

Langfuse shows score, cost and latency as changes against a baseline run.

knowledge-work × canvas-doc × supervised · Langfuse: the release check reads passed, regressed, or failed to run

boundary

The Console shows versions side by side but names no baseline; the person ranks by reading.

knowledge-work × canvas-doc × supervised · Anthropic Console: the Evaluate tab compares prompt versions side by side